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Amazon founder Jeff Bezos: The group had to spend a lot of money on austerity measures such as the closure of unprofitable shops and a wave of layoffs
Photo: Mark Ralston / AFP
For years, America's tech giants were mainly on the up.
They also earned a lot from the online boom of the Corona years.
However, their most recent quarterly figures revealed unexpectedly significant weaknesses.
Amazon, Apple and the Google company Alphabet disappointed their investors for different reasons.
Only the Facebook mother Meta surprised again with positive news for a long time.
Savings at Amazon
Despite concerns about inflation and recession, the world's largest online retailer Amazon made more sales than expected in the Christmas quarter, but also increased spending significantly.
Amazon had to spend a lot of money on austerity measures such as the closure of unprofitable shops and a large wave of layoffs.
What is intended to reduce costs in the long term initially caused some.
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Apple CEO Tim Cook
Photo: Ross D Franklin/AP
The electric car manufacturer Rivian, in which Amazon has a stake, also had to be corrected downwards in the balance sheet.
The net result was therefore only 278 million dollars in the fourth quarter.
In addition, the important cloud business has not recently grown as strongly as hoped.
The figures were not well received by investors: the share initially fell by five percent after the trading session.
Corona lockdowns pull Apple down
The iPhone group Apple usually presents itself as a money printing machine in the Christmas quarter.
This time, however, corona lockdowns in Chinese factories caused bottlenecks in the construction of the iPhone 14 Pro in November and December.
For this reason too, iPhone revenues fell by a good eight percent and dragged down group sales.
No other product is as important to Apple as its lucrative smartphones.
Instead of the usual record figures, there was now a drop in sales of a good five percent to 117.2 billion dollars, and quarterly profit fell by 4.6 billion.
The stock fell more than 3 percent in after-hours trading.
Google's advertising revenue is weakening
That leaves Google, whose parent company Alphabet felt the slump in the online advertising market last quarter.
The advertising business for the search engine and video platform YouTube fell by around 3.6 percent.
The bottom line is that profits fell by a good third to $13.6 billion.
The stock lost nearly 5 percent in after-hours trading.
Another tech boss, on the other hand, can be happy: Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg.
Although the market difficulties were also reflected in the balance sheet of the Facebook group, the quarterly profit alone has more than halved.
Nevertheless, the share price jumped at times by 20 percent.
This was because of the promises Zuckerberg made to lure his investors, including generous share buybacks, management layoffs and an upcoming "year of efficiency."
Good for Mark: His own fortune, which consists largely of meta stocks, has increased by more than $12 billion.
rai/dpa
